|
Post by Foxy on Feb 20, 2019 10:27:55 GMT -5
Okay, Mr. Dent , what did I forget this time?
|
|
|
Post by veryferociousdrama on Feb 20, 2019 12:06:59 GMT -5
The fact that the kids don't recognize Esme, when she was such a big part of their lives until very recently. The troupe members I can understand, but not her.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Feb 20, 2019 12:51:34 GMT -5
Having a hard time deciding on this one. Violet's zero-water-loss mortar-dissolver is a frequent point of objection; the crows carrying poetry across town has serious issues related to the fact that it can't be disentangled from the Quagmires being hidden in a fountain. It's the latter that I think takes the crown this time. There's no level on which it makes sense. For a start, it appears that the Quagmires were hidden in the very spout of the fountain, as they emerge soaking wet and Duncan mentions having to try to keep their notebooks as dry as possible (p. 215); they had enough space to reach out of the statue's beak to wrap a piece of paper around a crow's leg, clearly indicating they had enough room to wave for help, but not only managed not to draw attention but actively avoided drawing attention (p. 221); more to the point, they were able to hear the Baudelaires speaking outside but were unable to make themselves heard from the inside (p. 215); and they were in the fountain for four days but there's no indication that Olaf ever fed them. Purely on the face of it, this seems unbelievable.
But far worse is that the Quagmires being hidden in the statue is chronologically practically impossible. The fountain's given origin story is that Olaf learned that the Baudelaires would be living with Hector on the outskirts of V.F.D.; he then had his associates build the fountain (p. 221); and had it installed in the village without any objections whatsoever, on the morning of the day the Baudelaires arrived in town (p. 40). But the Baudelaires arrived in V.F.D. on the very same day they decided they wanted to live there; immediately after they make their decision, Mr. Poe makes the arrangements with the city government (and by extension, V.F.D.'s government) and takes them to the bus station (p. 20). Even if we charitably assume that Olaf had Mr. Poe wiretapped and could kick-start his arrangements the moment Mr. Poe got on the phone to the city government, and accept that he heard the specific arrangements regarding Hector a little later, it seems unlikely that he'd have had more than about three hours to get all this done before midday. (We'll generously allow extra time for disposing of the previous chief of police and replacing him with Officer Luciana.) This isn't even starting to address the question of travel time, given that the Baudelaires also took mechanised transport to the vicinity of the town - and remember, Olaf couldn't openly bring a mechanical device like an automobile within range of V.F.D. Unless the bus route to V.F.D. was ridiculously indirect and also lasted all night and into the next day, without Snicket mentioning any such a thing, I can't accept that Olaf and his associates had the time to prepare.
|
|
|
Post by Mr. Dent on Feb 20, 2019 20:52:25 GMT -5
Okay, Mr. Dent , what did I forget this time? crow hats,,,
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Feb 26, 2019 4:38:25 GMT -5
But far worse is that the Quagmires being hidden in the statue is chronologically practically impossible. I just realised that there's a smoking gun, of course, which makes it absolutely impossible for Fowl Fountain to have been installed on the same day the Baudelaires arrived, despite the Elders claiming as such (p. 40): Hector had already found a couplet when he woke up that morning (page 77). The process of delivering the couplets requires attaching the wet paper to a crow's leg while it's perching on Fowl Fountain in uptown V.F.D. in the morning, where it dries out overnight while the crow roosts in Nevermore Tree, and falls to the bottom of the tree the next morning (pages 40, 221). In other words, for Hector to have received a couplet the morning the Baudelaires arrived, Fowl Fountain can only have been installed in the afternoon two days earlier - because it could not have been installed in the morning while the crows were perching in the uptown area, but had to be ready for them them. In other words, the timeline has to be as follows: Minus two days: Fowl Fountain installed in uptown in afternoon, while crows are absent. Minus one day: Crows roost on Fowl Fountain in morning, first Quagmire couplet attached, couplet transported to Nevermore Tree. Arrival day: Couplet has fallen to foot of tree by morning, where it is discovered by Hector. Even by the most generous interpretation, Fowl Fountain has to have been installed before dawn on the day before the Baudelaires arrived, so we can save a day if we assume Olaf and his henchfolk worked at night - but it still can't have been the morning the Baudelaires arrived; indeed, it couldn't have been installed in the morning on any day, as the crows roost in that area in the morning and V.F.D. would not have permitted them to be disturbed. The only possible explanation is that Duncan and Isadora delivered the first couplet by an entirely different means, carefully making sure it would appear in the exact location that the subsequent couplets would arrive. So we can construct a canon-compliant timeline as follows: Minus one day: The Baudelaires decide to move to V.F.D., Mr. Poe makes the arrangements and puts them on an extremely long and circuitous overnight bus route. Before dawn on arrival day: Olaf hears of this, has his associates throw together Fowl Fountain in record time, ships it out to V.F.D., has Esmé take the place of the former chief of police, agrees the installation of the fountain and determines exactly where in town the Baudelaires will be staying. The Quagmires hear enough to construct their entire plan immediately, and while presumably being taken past Hector's house and Nevermore Tree, drop a couplet in a noticeable spot at the tree's foot. Up to dawn on arrival day: Fowl Fountain is installed in what is technically the morning, and the Quagmires placed inside. From dawn on arrival day: Hector finds the first couplet. Afternoon of arrival day: The Baudelaires arrive.
|
|
|
Post by Foxy on Mar 1, 2019 11:30:03 GMT -5
Would the fountain become any more plausible if somehow Count Olaf had the brochure planted on Mr. Poe's desk several weeks prior? Or if somehow he set the entire program of the villages raising children in motion?
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Mar 1, 2019 14:31:45 GMT -5
Absolutely, that would help considerably with some of the broader details; it's reasonable that there's already an element of him having anticipated what the Baudelaires would do. But the crux of the problem has crystallised into the statement by one of the Elders that the fountain "was just installed this morning" (p. 40). That's flat-out incompatible with Hector having found the first couplet at the foot of Nevermore Tree that same morning.
|
|
takatoguil
Catastrophic Captain
Posts: 64
Likes: 40
|
Post by takatoguil on Mar 1, 2019 17:59:53 GMT -5
Clearly VFD passed a law that all town property must be treated as if it was brand new to promote civic responsibility, and the Elder just wasn't sure how far they needed to go to avoid being burned at the stake.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Mar 2, 2019 2:39:49 GMT -5
More than plausible. As you can see from my own elaborate explanation above, where canon has unintended holes, I'm more than happy to bend it to breaking point in order to construct a solution.
|
|